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21

Niko, the original renditions of the carols are children shouting. They have neither musicality nor any need for it; they’re not meant to be listened to, they’re meant to serve a specific purpose.

But we listen to them in recordings with santurs, violins, clarinets and so on, and that’s fine, because these instruments have been registered as traditional and therefore belong among the permitted ones. If there’s a toubeleki too, hmmm, it might just about be acceptable. If there are polyphonic vocals as well, only on the Ionian Islands, where … they had them in their village too.

By the same logic, we should also reject all those classically trained composers who have presented “Greek dances”, because you can’t get a fustanella-wearer in the mood to dance a few rounds to their music. If the composer had concealed the word from the title, we might have listened with open ears and then said “I like it / I don’t like it”, rather than “this belongs among the acceptable / the unacceptable”.

22

Well, of course we should! Not even Skalkottas himself ever thought of suggesting that his work be used at village festivals. He knew perfectly well what purpose he had written them for. If he had presented them to us so that we could give them to village dancers to get into the spirit by dancing to them, we would simply reject them.

23

Well, there we are: the Edessa choir didn’t come to our door with its piano and say, «Shall we sing you some carols?» They know what they were doing: they present a series of arrangements intended to be listened to as music, rather than as the custom of carol-singing is practised. This isn’t folk tradition; it’s a musical activity that simply draws on melodies and lyrics from the folk tradition.

Exactly like Skalkottas.

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For the rest, I have to say that I’m sceptical about the places of origin attributed to some of the collection’s songs—for instance, the very first one, which I thought was not from Sitia but from somewhere in the Dodecanese. Also, in some places they have either not quite got certain words right or have confused the synizeses (vowels which, when combined, form a single syllable).

Purely as music, though, there isn’t a single second-rate note. Everything is worked out impeccably, both in terms of the harmonisation and, more generally, the «construction» of the arrangement, and in terms of the performance; it is deeply inspired, and combines musical elements far beyond what one might readily imagine could work together.

I discovered them six or seven years ago, through various individual videos, each featuring a single song, which I downloaded and play every year as the festive season approaches. This time I had difficulty finding them again on YT, but when I persisted I discovered something I hadn’t known: they had released a full album—apparently a double album—which includes far more than what I had already found when I was collecting the tracks one by one.

Their conductor, whoever did the arrangements, and the choristers themselves in equal measure are all deserving of the highest praise. It’s been some thirty years since collections of traditional carols in new performances became fashionable and started being released in droves, but I have never come across this level of quality, either in traditional-style or arranged performances. In authentic recordings, yes—but even then, never so many songs all of such a high standard. There would always be some that fell short.

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